por Yashenka Baca

La activista de

Dona Zao Vieira ended a 16-day hunger strike.

Occupy Wall Street activist in San Francisco and Oakland, Dona Zao Vieira, ended her 16-day hunger strike, which started on March 21st to protest losing her home to what she calls “illegal and fraudulent mortgage practices” used by Wells Fargo Bank.

­Vieira started actions after losing her home in Reno, Nevada due to a foreclosure by Wells Fargo, accused by her for scam. During 16 days Vieira carried out a vigil from Monday to Friday from 10:00 am to 1 pm.. outside Attorney General Kamala D. Harris’s office in Golden Gate Avenue 455, San Francisco.

“The goal of my hunger strike is not to ruin my health, but to highlight the urgency in which Attorney General Kamala, D. Harris, needs to act on behalf of all the homeowners. I am doing this for my family, to portray our seven year struggle against the systemic and intentional fraud that Wells Fargo perpetrated against us”, Vieira indicated in a press release. On day 9 of her hunger strike, Vieira decided to enter the Attorney General’s office, together with activist Beth Kean, to enquiry if there was an answer to the letter of explanation that she handed in at that office during her first day of fasting.

The activist reported that two staff from the Attorney General’s office came to talk to them. Vieira indicated that the staff showed concern about her health. The activist said that she was told that one of the attorneys at that office called Wells Fargo in December and requested them to talk to her about her foreclosure, but the bank didn’t show any interest.

According to Vieira, the main goal of her hunger strike was to know why or why not and when there would be a trial on Wells Fargo for offering mortgages with predatory practices. She noted that although the Attorney’s office has been reviewing mortgage issues for four years, Frances Grunder, the Attorney General’s Executive Assistant, explained that all the investigations are confidential until closed, so they couldn’t confirm whether Wells Fargo is one of the banks under investigation, or if any other of the so-called banks “too big to fall” are under scrutiny by the attorneys. Vieira insisted in calling the attention on the “corrupt financial and judicial system, under which the homeowners continue to suffer unfairly (…)

The people’s Attorney needs to act to judge the banks too big to fall. This is the only way to prevent future financial crises”, she concluded.

by NaturalNews

Ron Paul makes a groundbreaking admission to the public on tape – that the FDA and Big Pharma are indeed “in bed together,” both building up their monopolies and only interested in making more money. The Republican presidential candidate confirms that the corrupt corporations are running the show, that the FDA is doing more harm than good and many other eye-opening admittances.

Ron Paul: It never works that way. You know, your safety and your drugs, for instance, it sounds like a reasonable thing. You want safety in your drugs. But the FDA and the drug companies are in bed together and they squeeze out competitions and build up their monopolies and they love government medicine because they make more money. The insurance companies and the drug companies, whether it’s Democrats or Republicans reforming the medical care system, these corporations run the show. You know, they support it, it’s because the government doesn’t take it over. It’s the corporations that end up taking over. So, it’s well intended but I think it always backfires on us and that the people we’re wanting to regulate end up writing their own regulations.

Reporter: So in that particular case would the reasonable alternative being no FDA?

Ron Paul: I think so because, I don’t think, I think they’ve done more harm than good because sometimes it might take them 25 years to allow a good drug to come onto the marketplace and the rules and regulations inhibits the options of the physician to use drugs for anything other than not approved by the FDA, which means it slows up research and the cost goes up and then when it’s approved by the FDA, guess what happens? If you’re on the inside track of that- I’m the FDA- today I approve this drug, tomorrow, their drug company’s value, their stock goes up fifty fold. Just because a bureaucrat made this decision. So, it’s a protection of the corporation is basically what it is. People weren’t dying from bad drugs before we had the FDA. I mean, it just didn’t happen. There’d be other agencies that would do this. There’d be no reason to assume that all of a sudden, the drug companies have it in their interest to give you a bad drug.

Reporter: Well, I’m not sure what fits in there and it’s hard to prove a negative, but are you assuming that there are no bad drugs.

Ron Paul: There’s plenty of bad drugs, and the FDA’s permitted a lot of them to get on the market, too. I mean bad drugs on the market now. Did you ever see a PDR? They’re about that big and about half of them are useless. But if it’s FDA approved- and what does the FDA do when it comes to alternative or natural products? The FDA and the drug industry keeps them off the market. A natural drug product, alternative health care, freedom of choice, it is obstructed from those making those free choices. So it’s there to protect the drug industry. They very often do exactly the opposite. I believe in free choice on picking alternative care rather than having it licensed through the FDA and these drug approvals. It delays, it costs so many- this is one reason why drug costs are so high, because it goes through years and years and years of litigation and getting approval, and that’s a source of making drug costs much higher in cost.

Reporter: So how did we get to this mess? Let’s just stick with FDA or go with Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but how is it that this body of burdensome regulations was allowed to develop? Is it parts of the private sector finding ways to protect themselves or what?

Ron Paul: I don’t know, I haven’t done a detailed history of exactly this but my assumption would be that it’d be a lot of well noted people saying, well, we need these regulations to help the people and protect the people. But those individuals and the companies that are involved immediately leap to it and take over and find out how they can keep out their competition. ­What industry it is, whether it’s the housing industry, housing insurance, it’s always to squeeze the little guy out and protect the big industries. Competition serves the competitor who is trying to compete with big industry, and I don’t like to see government protecting big industries and big corporations.

­por Louis Nevaer

New America Media

Mexican soldiers participate in antidrugs operatives.

Mérida, Mexico – For almost a century, Mexico enjoyed the rare privilege of not having waged war. Now, almost six years into the “War on Drugs,” the country’s military is confronting an issue increasingly familiar to veterans and their families in the United States: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Mexico’s Constitution prohibits its armed forces from leaving Mexican territory without a declaration of war, relegating service members to humanitarian relief efforts. These include being among the first to arrive with food and medical supplies to Haiti following that nation’s devastating earthquake in 2010, and routine aid missions in neighboring Central American countries during natural disasters.

The “War on Drugs” has changed all that, however, and for the first time since World War II, Mexican soldiers are living through war-conditions at home, carrying with them the trauma of their experience.

“It’s not possible to engage in combat, and see war atrocities, and not be affected,” says Dr. Roberto Gómez, an expert on mental health issues. “Mexican soldiers are exposed to the same trauma as if they were in war.”

The emergence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is new for Mexico’s military, which has deployed some 50,000 soldiers across the country to battle powerful drug-trafficking cartels. Their tasks range from patrolling streets and investigating crimes to gathering intelligence.

It is an under-reported, but fast-growing phenomenon, one that is both an unforeseen consequence of the “War on Drugs” that since 2006 has claimed more than 47,000 lives, and one for which the Mexican military is desperately unprepared to handle. Mexican military hospitals are designed to treat physical injuries, not psychological conditions that require long-term care.

There are no statistics on the number of cognitively impaired soldiers in Mexico’s armed forces, but anecdotal evidence suggests that psychologically impaired soldiers are removed from the general population and given anti-depressants or similar sedatives to calm them down. Then they are  honorably discharged – the hope being that Mexico’s medical system, known as IMSS (Mexican Institute of Social Security, the national health care program), will take care of them. “This is an unreasonable expectation,” says Gómez.

“The national health care program is not designed to treat young men in their thirties who have experienced trauma leading to PTSD. Oftentimes they are confused, unable to sleep, have recurring nightmares, unwittingly provoke fights and are prone to violent outbursts.”

Families of military personnel who have been discharged report difficulty in assisting their loved ones, many of whom are turning to alcohol and need assistance in the most basic tasks, from dressing themselves, to watching television without having an episode when  a program airs that contains violence o In Mexico’s War on Drugs, Veterans Struggle With PTSD for Mexican society at large.

Families, meanwhile, are often reluctant to make demands on the military to provide continuing health care for soldiers suffering from PTSD, and the national health care system itself is only now coming to terms with the needs of these patients. Taking a page from history, however, Mexicans have begun to broach the subject in an indirect way: through theatre.

Not unlike the U.S., where the reading of Sophocles’ “Ajax” — which tells  the story of a veteran who, upon returning from war, is overcome by depression and kills his commanding officer — has helped American Marines deal with the consequences of PTSD, Mexicans are turning to drama to give a voice to the sudden emergence of the illness.

“We are dealing with a disorder that is becoming increasingly common in society and by those who have been victims of abduction, rape, or have experienced war or violence,” says Brazilian actress Giselle Jorgetti, who stars in the play “Em Tempo de Paz,” which explores PTSD during peacetime and is now being performed on stage in Mexico.

“The intention,” she explains, “is to bring the issue out into the public because it is a disorder that does not manifest immediately and may occur even  years after having lived through a certain situation.” For American service members, many of them struggling to cope with the aftereffects of one or more deployments to Afghanistan or Iraq, dramatizing internal wounds like PTSD has proven to be an effective tool.

“I know it’s a bit odd to have Greek plays read to a conference of military people,” said David Strathairn, best known for his Oscar-nominated role in “Good Night, Good Luck,” during a 2008 performance of Sophocles’ tragedy, in which he played the part of Philoctetes. “But you read these plays and you understand they are the first investigations into the condition of war in Western civilization.” ­A similar investigation is now underway in Mexico.

“When someone hears a noise and is startled, or smells an odor that reminds them of a situation they lived through, then that person behaves as if they were reliving that moment,” Jorgetti told reporters. “The protagonist in the play is a person who is increasingly isolated [because of his PTSD].” For the thousands of Mexican soldiers returning home after their tours of duty, such isolation and the memories of an increasingly violent and seemingly endless war hover just beneath the surface.

And as families await the safe return of husbands, fathers, sons, brothers and uncles – in scenes similar to those played out across the Unites States – there remains the open-ended question of their mental and emotional health, and the ability of Mexico’s military to address such challenges.